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Friday, February 24, 2012

A Trip to Bagan #1

This photo was taken from bus. I wish I can stopped the bus and took a few photo of this amazing place.

Time has passed very quickly. Now is 2012. I had made a 3 days 2 nights trip from Mandalay to Bagan at Aug 2010 and I am thinking of writing posts for that trip even though the trip is not so recent.

First, I bought a bus ticket 4000 kyats for one way. I think it was quite cheap but they put extra chairs for last minute passengers, so the car was slightly overloaded.

The scenery along the way is spectacular. A lot of palm trees standing under intense heat about 40C.

I visited Bagan when I was about 10 years old. At that time, traveling time between Mandalay to Bagan took about 10hrs. It is only 5 hrs with the new shortcut road. Even though the road condition is not so good, shorter traveling time is a better improvement.

Bagan is accessible by flight, train, bus and boat. However, traveling by bus is a good option. I took night train to Bagan from Mandalay at 2002 (10pm – 6am), but train service is not so reliable during monsoon season due to seasonal flooding and the train schedule might change or cancel.

When we alight from bus, house cart driver and taxi driver approached to use their service to go hotel or for visiting around Bagan. The were so desperate because of the low number of tourist in monsoon season and it was very hard for them to get a passenger. But I don't like people forcing me to buy their service. So I just wallked into the hotel, "Aung Mingalar Hotel", which is the nearest from the bus station.

Previously, I was thinking of inquiring a few hotels and choose the reasonable one. But "Aung Mingalar Hotel" quoted me 18000 Kyats for 1 room for 3 persons. That was very reasonable rate. So I decided to stay in this hotel for 2 Nights. My room no is 501. -

I asked this map from hotel, but they said, "This is not free, 1500 kyats". So just took a photo of this map and said "Thank you.". If I was lost, I could zoom from my camera LCD screen and check the map. :) The staff didn't seem to understand this. :)

It was about 3pm and I hired bicycle from hotel to visit around Bagan. The bicycle rental was 2500 kyats per day. Why I chose bicycle to get around? Because it is cheap, easy to stop anywhere, anytime to take photo without rushing.

Actually the scenery on the way to Bagan is really beautiful as seen in the photos. And yes, the blue sky is amazing as well. During that trip, I used auto mode for most of the photos but slightly increased the saturation to make it vivid.